Media challenged to provide more coverage on District Elections

With barely two months away for the District Assembly elections, the National Media Commission (NMC), has expressed its dissatisfaction with what it says is the poor level media attention so far.

The NMC’s position is based on its monitoring of content by media organisations, which reflects that the process has been relegated to the background.

The monitoring project, which ran from 12th to 23rd January 2015, collected data from 19 media outlets.

Speaking at a media briefing today, technical advisor to the monitoring project, Koshin Aden observed that overall coverage of the District level elections was very low for radio, TV and newspapers.

He reported that the media gave prominence to mostly sports news and disaster coverage, during the study period.

Whenever the district elections were featured, however, the NDC and NPP had the most coverage.

Executive Secretary George Sarpong was disturbed at the turn of events. According to him, the expectation was that a national exercise which has implication on the country’s governance system would be given the necessary attention.

The NMC has thus challenged the media to do more in reporting on issues concerning the upcoming district level elections, in order to create awareness and educate the electorate.